Election workers Mark Bezanson, left, and Julie Olson dump ballots collected earlier in the day from drop boxes onto a table for sorting at the King County Elections office, Monday, Nov. 5, 2018, in Renton, Wash. Voters in Washington all vote only by mail. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Between rising pension and operational costs, Arcadia is facing money troubles at a scope it has never seen, city officials said.

To stem this tide, the city has placed on a June 4 mail-in ballot a 0.75% bump to sales tax on local purchases to cushion the city’s budget. That would bring the local sales rate to 10.25%, the highest allowed by the state.

If passed, Measure A would yield about $8.6 million annually, which would be dedicated to keeping city services at the levels residents have come to appreciate, Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto, said. Arcadians will start to receive their mail-in ballots Monday.

In the 2018-19 fiscal year, Arcadia expected to take in $3.1 million less than it spent, but the real number has grown to more than $4 million as the year played out, Lazzaretto said.

“If we do nothing, next year (the deficit) will be more than $5 million,” he said. The hits have come fast. Only last year, Arcadia’s budget broke even, Lazzaretto said.

About 62% of the city’s budget is dedicated to public safety, which makes it the crux of measure’s push, Lazzaretto said. But the financial stress still affects every aspect of running the city, he added.

Without Measure A, the city is looking to cut 13% each year from every department to keep up financially. If city leaders wanted to leave public safety untouched, several enterprises, such as the Recreation and Community Services Department, the Gilb Museum of Arcadia Heritage and the city library, would have to shut down, Lazzaretto said.

The deficit problem the city if facing is structural, Lazzaretto said. “It’s not like when we have financial trouble for a couple years, the market dips, the economy struggles a little bit, but when it gets better we come out of financial trouble,” he said.

In response to the Great Recession, the city foresaw financial turbulence. In 2011, the city lowered pensions for all employees hired thereafter, Lazzaretto said. Since then, CalPERS, which runs the pension programs for most California public employees, required cities to contribute more into their employees’ retirement accounts.

“We made people work longer before they could retire and slightly reduced the percentage (city employees get paid yearly) when they retire,” Mickey Segal, former mayor of Arcadia and chair of the Arcadia Citizens Financial Advisory Committee, said.

“The problem is, you don’t see the benefit for years because people have to get old to be affected” by the price drop, Segal said.

Without Measure A, the city would need to make another $8 million of cuts yearly for the next 25 or 30 years, until pension costs come back down, Lazzaretto said.

Because it’s unlikely city leaders would leave public safety unscathed should Measure A fail, Arcadia fire Chief Mike Lang has a plan: the department would have to lay off four people by July; if 10 fire positions are cut in three years, fire engines and other equipment would phase out one by one, which would shutter one of Arcadia’s three fire stations,

“We’ve gotten creative on making the money we have stretch a little further,” Lang said.

The Police Department would have to freeze or lay off 13 officers in the next three or four years, at a rate of two to four officers per year, Arcadia police Chief Bob Guthrie said.

If residents vote against Measure A, the Police Department “cannot fund communication outreach officers and crossing guards” or extra patrols, he said. The cuts translate to fewer officers “spread throughout the city at certain times.”

It’s not a leap to argue crime rates could rise, Guthrie added.

“If you ask anybody what matters to them about Arcadia, the first thing they’re going to say is safety,” Lazzaretto said.

“If it doesn’t pass, Arcadia will still be an ‘A’ city, it just wouldn’t be the special place it has been,” Lazzaretto said. The city would have to go back to the minimum level of staffing in every department, he added. “We wouldn’t have that flexibility anymore” to fund extra services like crime deterrent and neighborhood watch programs, Lazzaretto said.

If Measure A does pass, “for a year or two, we’ll have a little extra money we can play with, but it’s not like we’ll have millions to add services,” Lazzaretto said. But, in this election, what’s most important is Arcadians have the option to maintain the level of service they want and have come to expect from public safety, Guthrie said.

Residents can register to vote up to 15 days before the election, until May 20. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped off at city hall by June 4.

Tyler Evains is a news assistant with the San Gabriel Valley Newsgroup. She received her Bachelor's from University of La Verne where she was the editorial director and arts editor for the Campus Times, staff writer for La Verne Magazine and staff photographer for both publications. She also helped charter the first traditionally African-American sorority at ULV, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. in 2017. Tyler served as the historian and social media manager for ULV's chapter of the organization.

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